Novels

When Tarzan was old enough to explore the jungle on his own, he found his parents' house and discovered books there, including some reading primers. Through long hours of study, he was able to decipher the words, teaching himself the English language. When he later encountered white folks, he was able to communicate with them. Except… he spoke with them verbally, something he would NOT have been able to teach himself from books. Sure, maybe it's possible for him to teach himself to read and write English words that way, but having never heard the words he'd have no idea how to pronounce them, or understand someone else saying them! Pronunciation cannot be conveyed through the written word if you haven't already heard those sounds and associated them with the letters that represent them!

In the book, he cannot speak English when he first meets white men; he is taught to speak by a Frenchman during his first sea voyage. The Frenchman's English is poor, and so he uses Tarzan's written English as a basis for instruction, but teaches him French vocabulary. Thus, he learns that ape is pronounced "singe," man is pronounced "homme" and water is pronounced "eau".

In fact, the problem with Tarzan's early communication with the Porter party goes precisely the opposite direction: it's clearly established that he can't speak English, having no idea of the connection between the written words and the sounds, so he has to communicate through notes — which he signs with his name, despite that if he has no idea of the connection between the written words and the sounds he should have no idea how to spell it.

Could he not have learned by rote? Matching nouns to pictures, then simple verbs and sentences also based on pictures, then gradually recognizing those words in non-illustrated text that applied to the jungle, then filling in the blanks based on his own experiences to expand his vocabulary to concepts he is familiar with, then applying the words he knows to other descriptions of concepts he isn't familiar with, then working backwards from the descriptions to learn the spelling of new concepts, etc., etc.? He wouldn't understand spelling, but he'd recognize whole words or phrases that weren't idiomatic, after a fashion.

That's not how it's described in the book. But as a thought experiment: Slightly more likely but not much more. He would still miss cultural context, and picture books tend to be extremely culture dependent. Some easy examples: How would he recognize what a house looks like in England with only in jungle experiences? How would he recognize the nuclear family as that's not really a unit in Gorilla society? Can apes count? Also he only knows animal language which is extremely unlikely to have anything in common with human languages and even those can be extremely diverse (for an English speaker Japanese or Hungarian or anything not Indo-European is completely alien and weird in logic, figuring out their grammar from books not in a language you know... good luck). Well except if ape speak is cypher English and somehow those apes are Civilized Animals with a society eerily similar to England's. (Also you can actually give this a try: here is The Other Wiki's list of undeciphered writing systems. Choose one. Google scans, photographs of relics using it (the more th better). And you're set... you might have less to work with but have access to much more background information and resources than Tarzan had which evens it out. Good luck.)

Thing is, Tarzan's adopted family aren't gorillas, but some kind of ape-like hominid called Mangani, more in line with the "missing link" than any real apes. So talk of "ape speak" is largely irrelevant as we don't know what how advanced (or otherwise) the Mangani's speech is.

This troper remembers readin' a Tarzan book where he encounters two tribes headed by ugly-looking brothers, both of whom have strange star charts in their rooms. Tarzan postulates that they may be aliens. Then this is forgotten and never brought up again. You'd think the discovery of alien life would be a pretty significant thing.

Maybe not so for gorillas.

If Tarzan can recognize star charts and speculate on the possibility of alien life, then he surely knows the value of such information. Despite his origins, he is fairly well-educated.

Disney version

Also from the Disney version, just before the death of Kerchak, the dying character says Tarzan was right about the other humans, and that Tarzan should protect the family of gorillas. But, Tarzan ended up leading the humans right to the gorillas, which is what Kerchak was so worried about. Tarzan didn't mean to, of course, but he indirectly put his gorilla family in danger. How is that being "right?"

Kerchak doesn't tell Tarzan that he was right, he only requests forgiveness for not accepting him as his son and as a member of the family.

In the Disney version, how can Tarzan be clean shaven? They never show him cutting his hair or anything. This is especially questionable since nearly every other human male in the movie has facial hair.

It's not just the facial hair, either. Except for his head (and presumably in one other place we can't see), he doesn't have hair anywhere.

Well, in the books, it's mentioned he shaves his facial hair with a knife to distinguish himself from the Mangani, after having discovered his human origins. Yeah, I know they are different universes, but perhaps he shaves the same way…

He found the cabin. Did his father have a beard?note No, seriously, I can't remember.

His father had a pretty bitchin' mustache, but his chin was clean-shaven.

Chalk it up to Lazy Artist. Animating Tarzan's movements with body hair would likely add a lot of work (and thus, cost) considering his very involved movements. This could also be why he has no facial hair, though that could be chalked up to The Coconut Effect (as Tarzan is almost always seen clean shaven).

Even if his father had facial hair, there's no guarantee that Tarzan would be able to grow it too. As for body hair, well, anatomical accuracy has never been very high on Disney's list. Very few of their character who should have body hair do (Gaston only has if for a short gag during his song and then it's never seen again).

Disney put a lot of effort into making Tarzan anatomically correct. They brought in a professor to make sure all of Tarzan's muscles were in the right place.

I always assumed that he was unable to grow facial hair (which, although improbable, is not impossible, even given his British background and his father's sweet mustache), and that his body hair is too faint to see.

Worth noting that when Clayton is trying to tell him to lead them to the gorillas at first, Tarzan takes an interest in Clayton's little pencil thin moustache, tugging on it curiously. He also pinched the Professor's moustache earlier before Clayton tried to shoot him.

My dad shaves twice a day and has forearms that look like he's wearing a fuzzy sweater, but I couldn't grow a mustache if I tried and am routinely asked where I wax. It happens. Tarzan's mom might have had enough anti-hairiness genes that while his hair grew out, he couldn't grow facial hair.

What I never understood is Tarzan's loincloth. Theoretically, a boy raised by apes would see no need for modesty. Unless he was made fun of because humans are roughly four times as "big" as gorillas.

Because no one wants to see a nude cartoon boy running around? That's why Disney's The Jungle Book had Mowgli run around in what amounts to red underwear.

Not sure if this makes any sense, but creatures tend to grow when aroused, so I can see that being an issue.

In a fight, apes go for the groin and his should be an easier target than that of any ape.

In the novel, Tarzan learns from the books in his parents' cabin that he is not an ape, but a man. As far as he can tell, the main distinctions between an ape and a man are that men wear clothes, and they also shave. So he takes some clothes off a native hunter, then discards most of them.

Except that it's implied that his interaction with Jane was his first encounter with anyone of his species.

He has examples from the picture books in his father's cabin.

There's no picture books in the Disney Movie, and he doesn't know about the cabin until after he meets Jane in the movie.

I wonder where exactly he GOT the loincloth in the first place.

In the books, the first humans Tarzan ever saw were Gomangani — black men, hunters from the local village. When he reasoned he was human and not an ape, he started killing the hunters and wearing their clothes and jewelry. That's where he got his loincloths. The villagers thought at first that a particularly nasty ghost was responsible.

At least in the Disney movie, when Kala first found him, he has a diaper on. Maybe they thought he had to have a piece of cloth around him for some reason based on that? Don't ask where they got the loincloth, though.

The shipwreck washed up on the beach right? Maybe there was some cloth on the vessel- or that's just a really, REALLY dirty piece of a sail.

Wearing clothes is not just about modesty, or about heat. It's also practical protection for a male's exposed genitals. He's more intelligent than apes—he makes himself a spear, after all. It's possible he fashioned a loincloth.

There are some pretty nasty thorny plants and venomous insects in the African rainforest. He may have gotten a nasty sting in a really bad place as a boy, and taken rudimentary precautions thereafter with scraps of leaf or hide, swapping them for fabric when he found some in a scrounging raven's nest or whatever.

It was mentioned in the novels that Tarzan used it as a kind of belt. Indeed, if he spends much time travelling by vine but sometimes uses crude tools, a belt would help a lot.

This is probably the best justification yet. He hadn't started seriously inventing yet (during the 'Son of Man' montage), but a way to carry things around is just the sort of thing a five-year-old might invent on his own.

Terk is Tarzan's best friend, and it no doubt shows, but she certainly doesn't have much of a spine whenever they get in trouble and Kerchak appears.

That's her personality. Nothin' outta place there.

Kerchak is a 300lb wild male silverback and leader of the troop. Nothing wrong with being scared of him, or respectful. It's not like with humans.

Bear in mind that Kerchak isn't just the 'father' or tribe leader. He's the sheriff, the judge, and the general of their community all in one. Approach with respect.

I came on the page and the first thing I saw was 'female ape Terk', and you should have seen the epic double take.

Did everyone miss the fact that her mom calls her "young lady" and Tantor calls her "missy"?

I sure did.

Well, that's a good question. Why didn't Disney want us to know what Terk's gender was. Seriously, I thought Terk was a guy when I first saw it as a child!

Terk's name is short for Terkoz and he was male in the book. And a vicious bully, whom Tarzan came close to killing. Terk in the film is based on Burroughs' brief reference to one of Tarzan's "little cousins".

In the Disney film, 'Terk' is actually short for Terkina. Her mother calls her that at the beginning of the movie, after she calls Tarzan "freaky-looking".

How did Tarzan know how to say "Tarzan" in English, when introducing himself to Jane? Unless gorillas can say "Tarzan" in English, too, his real name wouldn't have sounded like that.

It's pretty obvious to me that what we hear throughout the movie when there are no humans besides Tarzan is Tarzan and the animals imagining themselves talking in English. Some real life gorillas actually hear themselves saying the words that they're signing.

Perhaps "Tarzan" is the closest thing to a word his name is.

In the book I'm pretty sure it says the apes (which are more of a mishmash of gorillas, chimps, and extinct hominids) can speak, and "Tarzan" is his name in their language.

Specifically, it means "white skin". Mangani is the word for ape, but also for human: Tarmangani are white men, Gomangani are black men. Tarzan knows he is a Tarmangani years before he ever sees one, because the other apes have seen them and tell him about them.

Tarzan's voice isn't quite the same as the apes; presumably "Tarzan" was a different, possibly unrelated vocalization of his identity he came up with along with his name in the Gorilla language. For what reason, who knows? Maybe he just wanted to explore how and why he was different from his family that way.

Tarzan is taught to learn English by Jane and her father yet speaks with an American accent. Having been taught by two British people, shouldn't he pronounce words the same way as them?

Maybe an American accent is closest to the accent an ape speaking English as a foreign language would have…

Except that if you speak Spanish, Japanese, or any other language, when they teach you English you would try to imitate the accent of the person teaching you. You could have your own accent thrown in, but British English and American English right out say words differently since vowel are not pronounce the same, he would had said the word coffee as "coh-feh" instead of "co-fy" in American English.

What's interesting about this is that when he's deliberately mimicking Jane and Clayton, he actually does put on an English accent, but when speaking as himself he does not.

Which would be believable if it wasn't for the fact that Tarzan said his name in English BEFORE Jane and her father taught him how to speak.

He didn't say his name "in English". He just said his name—the noises that conveyed his identity. Would've been a different story if he'd said "Tarzan", and followed it up with "which means 'White Skin' in the language of the apes", like some bar-hopping popped-collar douchebag pompously telling you that "Keith means 'forest' in Gaelic."

But the gorillas don't make sounds that resemble English, or any other language, in any other way. How would he pronounce "Tarzan" if all the others only hoot and grunt when outside the Translation Convention?

They have a full language in the books.

OK, there are no piranhas in Africa. Then how comes elephants know about piranhas (or South America)?

They're elephants, they remember it from a past life :D

Rule of Funny, I guess... It also explains why they think Tarzan is a piranha.

There are birds, like arctic terns, that sometimes hopscotch between northwest Africa and eastern Brazil during their epic migrations. If the various bird species of this Verse talk to each other, rumors of the Americas or even Australia may have reached those oversized ears, assuming the elephants have been eavesdropping on bird-gossip.

Also, Tantor shouldn't know what Peanuts are, as Peanut Plants only naturally grow in South America. Maybe by that time Peanut Plants would be grown and Peanuts would be produced in Africa, but Tantor still shouldn't know about them as he is too far away from Humans to see or eat them...

I read somewhere that gorillas have offspring every few years or so. Why doesn't Tarzan have any "brothers" by the time he's an adult? Or was that just not in the book, so they ignored it?

Maybe he did - those small gorillas he plays with? Or maybe he did but they were too eaten by Sabor?

Remember that human children grow at a much slower rate and need more care than baby apes. As long as Tarzan was small and helpless, Kala wouldn´t want to have another baby... as for why she doesn´t have any babies after Tarzan reaches adulthood... maybe she and Kerchak don´t get along so well after she adopted Tarzan? Either way, the young gorillas in the group would be children of Kerchak as silverbacks usually are the only males to mate in a gorilla group...

Given how heartbroken Kala was after the death of her baby and the constant stress and care requirements of raising a human (who mature much slower than gorillas) it's entirely possible she just doesn't want to have more children.

She also went from being Kerchak's partner and preferred mate—even sharing a nest and cuddling almost exclusively—to him disowning her adopted son. It's very possible that they're no longer on good enough terms to be mates but she also doesn't want to look for a mate elsewhere because she still has feelings for the silverback; alternately her eccentricity might mean that none of the males, including Kerchak, are really interested in mating with her a all. It doesn't seem to be bothering Kala any, so it's probably not very important.

On a related note, why is Sabor even still alive when Tarzan grows to manhood? That cat was no cub when Tarzan's parents were attacked, and wild leopards are lucky to live halfway into their second decade. At the very least, Sabor should've been run off the territory by a younger, stronger leopard by the time Tarzan was grown enough to challenge one.

Does anything in the movie itself (Word of God aside) explicitly state that it's the same leopard? The leopard Tarzan kills could be the granddaughter of the original Sabor that killed Tarzan's parents, or a completely different leopard that just happens to look alike. In the book, every lioness is Sabor for the apes; maybe that applies here too?

I'm pretty confused about this key instance of Poor Communication Kills: If Tarzan learned to speak English, and could convey thoughts accurately, why did he only say "Kerchak" when they asked why he couldn't take them to the gorillas? And more importantly, why didn't they ask who Kerchak was, or what it meant? Seriously, couldn't most of the issues after that have been avoided, if he'd just added "doesn't trust you" to his statement?

Perhaps he was embarrassed; have you ever had to tell a friend that your parents "don't trust them"? It's awkward as hell.

He may not have had the vocabulary to put a thought as complex as trust into words. There wasn't exactly a slide for "trust" that they could have shown him.

What happened to the rest of the mutinous crew?

If I remember correctly, the last we see of them, they're being chased through the jungle by an army of angry monkeys. Remember what Professor Porter said: "People get lost in the jungle every day!"

We saw most of them being herded, for lack of a better term, into the cages they'd been using for the gorillas by the jungle animals; thus, it can be presumed that the crew members who hadn't mutinied simply carried the cages back to the boat and took them out to the ship, where they were kept that way until they got back to London.

Was Terk into Tarzan?

No, she's a lesbian just like Rosie. She never even showed attraction to male gorillas. It's pretty obvious they were just good friends.

If you pay attention to the dialogue, Terk calls Kala "Aunt Kala" or "Auntie K." That makes her and Tarzan adoptedcousins. She's also a good bit older than him, since she's old enough to walk and talk while he's still an infant and gorillas mature faster than humans. She also thinks he's unattractive, like the rest of the pack.

I always assumed that Kerchak, as the alpha silverback of the gorilla group, was the father of most of the infants, including Terk. This would make her and Tarzan adopted half-siblings.

Or quite possibly she thought he was ugly. They ARE two different species after all. It's like a parent adopting a chimpanzee and you growing up with it. Doesn't mean you're interested in boinking it. Because it's a chimpanzee.

In a deleted scene, Terk specifically describes Tarzan as "a skinny, hairless, ugly guy." So, yes, even though Terk is Tarzan's best friend, she apparently doesn't think he's much of a looker.

If Tarzan learned to speak English from British people, then why does he speak English with an American accent?

Tarzan grew up speaking the ape language. By that standard, he's doing an amazing job trying to copy the English accent. "American" just happens to be where the limits of his vocal flexibility end. It's not that far off, relatively speaking.

How did anybody know that Sabor is actually female?

Sabor's gender is never brought up in the movie. Sabor was a female lion in the books so they just played off that.

On the topic of Sabor, did anyone else question why she killed Tarzan's human parents? If we chalk it up to predatory instinct, then why were they relatively untouched after she did the deed? We see their bodies and a few bloody paw prints, but there isn't much to suggest she ate any part of them.

Probably the same reason Mufasa's body wasn't shown to be a smear of blood and entrails after he got trampled to death by a herd of wildebeest: you're not going to see explicit gore in a Disney cartoon. If you really need an in-universe explanation, then consider that Tarzan's parents were half-concealed underneath a tarp of some kind and only shown from the waist down; maybe Sabor just ate part of the upper body, then dragged the rest into some kind of cover to hide it, as cats are wont to do. Then, mostly sated, she prowled off somewhere for a little while, only to return and find a gorilla invading her larder and about to make off with the baby Sabor was saving for later...

This may be Too Much Information. In the wild, some predatory animals can be fussy eaters. They usually eat the body and internal organs first (in that scene the corpses of Tarzan's parents are laying facing away from the viewer), meaning they'd go for the torso. While it's unclear if that's what Disney intended, that'd be FAR MORE gore than even most M-rated movies would show.

Gee, I've been Wondered what the Rest of their Corpses looked like, Exposed with Guts and Blood!!?

Also related to Sabor... how did she even release herself from those ropes after Kala left with Tarzan? Yeah, she was quite agile, even for leopard standarts, but still, that must have been quite a fall...

Probably swung until she could reach the branch from which the pulley was suspended and then used her claws for leverage. Come to think of it, I've never counted her hind toes in her next appearance...

What happened to Tantor's mother, and the other elephants? We see them stampeding off into the jungle after they mistake Tarzan for a pirahna, and then "Son of Man" starts to play, and then for the rest of the movie Tantor is all grown up and pretty much living with the gorillas. Did the rest of his herd ever come back for him offscreen, or are we to assume they just abandoned him or got lost?

Tantor's a rogue. It's actually pretty common for adult male elephants to leave their old herd and live away from other elephants until they encounter potential mates.

Ah, yes...Upon watching the movie again, I've realized that other elephants appear back in the water during "Son of Man". My mistake.

So, Tarzan's pop is able to build a entire treehouse from the driftwood, an awesome feat of engineering... What? Why not use his amazing skills to build a boat and get the hell out of Africa with as much supplies as they can carry?

Even if he had planned on doing that - he might have, eventually - I think building a dwelling for himself, his wife, and his infant son was and should be his top priority, both so that he would have a place to sleep while building the boat, and as a Plan B in case the boat doesn't work out. And this is assuming it's even possible to build a boat of any sort capable of lasting in the water with three people on board, on a deserted jungle island.

Why did Professor Porter think it to be necessary or even very smart to have the captain tell the people in England that he and Jane simply got lost in the jungle and were never found again? I mean, I understand that he was willing to give up his life's work to continue living with his daughter, but why would he basically strip them of any means of contact with the human world like that in the process?

The house in the trees built by Tarzan's parents seems like quite a prominent part of the island's scenery from the shore, if a bit derelict due to disuse. Thus, shouldn't Jane and her father have noticed it and been at least somewhat interested? Couldn't that have given them at least a clue as to who Tarzan really was, or a reason to show him the house before Kala did? How would they not notice it?

The coastline is pretty mountainous, as well as being overgrown. Being in a different cove or bay, in whichever direction the Porters' steamship did not approach from while seeking a good landing point, would be sufficient to conceal even a sizeable landmark like the treehouse. It's just how the geography happened to work out - the plot really wouldn't have been much different if the Porters had found and explored it. (And you're right that - at least in the book - its contents helped Jane work out most of Tarzan's backstory.)

It seems out of character for Kerchak to be so easily forgiving of Tarzan when he comes to save the gorillas from Clayton's men. Yes he's risking his life to try to protect them but from Kerchak's point of view he's still screwed up big time and put the entire clan in danger. It seems like Kerchak should have concluded that he was right all along not to trust Tarzan and to feel that he'd betrayed them by leading the humans to them. And even when Kerchak is shot as a result of Tarzan's actions his dying thoughts are to finally accept Tarzan as one of them and to trust him to lead the clan after him. Tarzan had been trying to be accepted as one of them for his entire life; I find it hard to believe that a single heroic gesture coupled with a disaster brought upon the gorillas by Tarzan's action's would be enough to improve Kerchak's opinion of him.

Is there a question?

I think what they're asking, in essence, is "Why is Kerchak so quick to forgive Tarzan in the end?" In response, I shall point out that Tarzan was still new to the company of humans, and after spending what was probably about 24 hours thinking on it and lamenting his absence, Kechak would've realized that his son didn't realize what he was getting the family into when he led the humans to their nesting ground. In addition, two of the people Tarzan brought to see the gorillas - Jane and her father - show up to fight against Clayton and his men in the climax, and Kerchak may have realized, if he hadn't known all along, that they really did mean no harm overall; please take note of the fact that whenever he comes across the humans during the film, the only one he actively tries to attack is Clayton. Thus, Jane and her father really helped to change his views by helping to save the gorilla family. Finally, Kerchak's final words to Tarzan were focused largely on accepting him as a member of the family, and as his son, rather than what happened with the humans - you're obviously not going to waste your final words to someone you should've loved more throughout your life on things that he's already heard dozens of times before.

Leopards only live for a maximum of twenty years and Sabor is seemingly fully grown when she kills Tarzan's parents when he is a baby. He's around twenty at the youngest during the main part of the film so the sequence where he kills Sabor takes place at least twenty years later yet she's still in a young, healthy, agile condition.

In the books "sabor" is the generic term for a lioness. That may not have been the same animal.

There's also the fact that the particular leopard which apparently killed Tarzan's parents was last seen tied up pretty good at the top of the treehouse with now way to get down. It's entirely likely that that leopard eventually died of starvation there while the one which later fights and is killed by Tarzan is a completely different cat.

Let's talk about something commonly referred to as "his father's clothes"; the decision of the creators to have Tarzan wear that suit when he decides to leave to England are pretty much unknown (could've been to cause a bigger impact when he bids Kala farewell, and/or to force him to get captured when he tries to escape from the thugs on the ship... perhaps just for the sake of having the jungle hunk clad in a suit too!), especially because no one tells him to do so; it's quite the enigma, but the real question here is: WHERE did it really come from? His parents weren't carrying any clothes besides the ones they were wearing (and doubt they could've elaborated them while stranded), it's nonsensical to think they'd be in such optimal state after 20+ years anyway, let alone fit Tarzan like a glove, and he certainly didn't get them from Jane and co.!

If I'm remembering correctly, Tarzan comes across the blue blanket he'd used as a baby inside that house, and it looks to be largely intact. If the clothes were kept in something like a suitcase or chest of drawers or something, I could imagine them still being in largely the same condition, if not even more pristine despite so many years passing. And consider that his parents might've tried gathering whatever supplies they could get their hands on as they worked to escape the fire on the ship, or they might've walked along the shore and collected what they could find and use as it washed up on shore - if you were trapped on a deserted jungle island, I'd imagine cloth would be a pretty valuable resource. And as for why Tarzan donned the suit, it was basically his ways of showing that he was leaving his jungle home and family behind so he could go and live alongside other humans. (Albeit temporarily, as he later decides.)

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